


Kuyashii no Niwa

by Mary_the_gardener, theoceanpath



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:14:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26612029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mary_the_gardener/pseuds/Mary_the_gardener, https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoceanpath/pseuds/theoceanpath
Summary: As a pandemic ravages throughout Europe and the world, Javi and Yuzu find themselves reminiscing. It's been what, nearly five years since TCC planted a garden, and Javi is trying (and failing) again.
Relationships: Javier Fernández & Yuzuru Hanyu
Kudos: 15





	Kuyashii no Niwa

"Someone murdered my succulents again," Javi groans. The sun laughs and his sister laughs and tears leak from the hollow plastic swan in his hand. He grabs his phone in despair. "They're dying," he screams into the buttons of cyberspace.

Dots tick, _pop pop pop_ , and none other than Yuzuru Hanyu, twice champion of the laurel-wreathed games shows up. Through the grainy swatches of color on the scratched touchscreen, Javi sees flickerings of the great onmyouji, mystical prowess and sagely wisdom channeled into one pair of flashing tiger eyes poised to strike fear on anyone who dares threaten the precious _violet queen_ echeverias.

And kalanchoes. He has widow’s thrills, money jades, and a pair of red pagodas— _crassula capi-something_ — hiding at the bottom of a garbage bin. Or a compost pile. Somewhere. It’s his cat’s fault.

"Javi," the boy in the impeccable coal Chacott jacket admonishes, "stop overwatering. You're too kind."

"But they're—"

"—drowning," Yuzu finishes for him. "They can't breathe."

"I swear I didn't water them _too_ much. Only when they looked a little bit thirsty."

Yuzu contemplates for a moment. "Javi," he says, starting to tick off some list in that super prodigy brain of his, "you know they're different. Percentage of oxygen, aerobic-anaerobic microorganism ratio, temperature correlation with nutrient uptake, soil particle size, relative hunidity…" 

"Whoaw, whoaw, whoaw. Looks like someone became a gardening expert overnight."

"It's _Science_ ," Yuzu corrects him. He sends a link to an article listing _30 Things to Consider to Keep Your Desert Plants Healthy_ that he would never have considered five years and a pandemic ago. "You checked online before buying them, right?"

Another text box pops up. Another link. Yuzu is at it with his mad research skills again.

Javi snorts.

_Typical, typical Yuzu._

The years come swirling back with the flashing of the chatbox, and it is 2015 again, and Yuzu is exorcising sparrows while Jun sighs over a can of slugs, tugging off a fat spotted caterpillar as his knees sink deeper into compost. Javi's just won Worlds and Yuzu is working off his kuyashii in a tiny patch of land in Ontario, catching leafhoppers and finding paper wasp nests, watching Jun shower mineral water on a frog. There's a blooming carpet and the smell of pines, squirrels picking a fight with some incorrigible raccoon camping out by the newly installed bird feeder, lots of butterflies and too many bees, Nam running for his life amid cries of _white trillium, you must never pick that flower or the plant will die!_

 _Trillium Grandiflorum, genus:Trillium, subgenius: Trillium, family: Melanthiaceae_ — he'll be carrying that useless information to his dying day, all because of their stupid tongue-twister game.

"Well I at least got the scientific names right!"

"But everything else—?"

Javi can't help the sheepish grimace and the flush of heat that creeps down his neck. This is what his sister warned him about when she saw the array of new baby plants lined up on his porch. He can almost hear Brian sigh, _Oh Javi, when will you ever learn not to rush in before thinking things through?_

"I… uh… suddenly everyone was into this plant growing stuff and it seemed like a fun thing to do…" he tries to explain. "I thought it would work out this time."

"But you didn't study enough," Yuzu accuses. And he's right, he's right. _Fools rush in where angels fear to tread_ , and the sick row of jellybean plants he bought on a whim have paid the price for his mistake. Seeing almost all the reddish beady things fall off and die in one week was… disappointing.

"Research is _your_ expertise, remember? You know me, I kinda— I kinda forgot."

And then the irony of it strikes him, the fact that once upon a time he was laughing at Yuzu for measuring watering requirements to the last drop. Now he's losing his mind over shriveled leaves, sooty mold, stems turned to mush. Poetic justice, and yeah, maybe he deserved that.

But his plants don't. "Isn't there any way to save them?" 

"Not if they're already dead. Javi is making a _graveyard_ in his own _backyard_ ," Yuzu says flatly. And then he smiles, that trademark Cheshire-cat Yuzu smile. Which means he was joking. Which is unfair, because the poor succulents are in their death throes and scolding his cat can only go so far and he just heard the most sobering, heartbreaking fail of a joke since the years they pummeled quads together into Cricket's sand-bottomed floor.

Javi looks at him, micro puddles of water flooding his cervineous eyes, “You— I— "

Yuzu shakes his head.

"That can’t be true. You're lying…”Yuzu just looks at him, truth-revealing sadness coating his features, making Javi’s denial crumble to the ground, pulverized, like fertilizer, until he relents. “I didn’t mean to!” he cries eventually, voice broken by a sense of guilt arguably too big for the deed he’s culpable of, but everyone, Yuzu included, says that Javi’s heart is extra-large.  
  
Then Yuzu’s expression morphs into something softer. “I know, Javi, I know," he says, reassuringly, “You saw everyone doing it and thought it would be nice, right?”  
  
“Yeah…” admits Javi, glancing down with mortification at the darkish and lucid leaves of his _echeveria_ putrefying discreetly.  
  
“But, Javi,” the newly warmed tone of the reigning Olympic champion’s voice draws his attention back to the cracks of the tempered glass screen-protector behind which Yuzu’s soft face is hiding, “I know it’s been a few years, but don’t you remember anything of all the advice Brian, Tracy and all the others gave you?”  
  
A solitary car zooms out in the streets, the sun keeps shining sneeringly upon him through the open window; then Javi finally catches what his friend is referring to. “A little," he concedes, yet this time there’s no shame in his confession, “but you should know as well as me that there’s not really much useful info about growing cacti I could gather from that experience.” The man of La Mancha scrutinizes the pixels in front of him, a sardonic glint making his mud-coloured eyes sparkle. “Or maybe I should have played some classical piece to my aloe, that would have saved it from death for sure.”  
  
Yuzu rolls his eyeballs back into their sockets, white showing and making a genuine laugh rumble up and out of Javi’s throat. They both cackle, loud wonky sounds and faces ending out of the trembling frame.  
  
“That was a disaster.”  
  
“It was.”

"But you were worse."

"Hey, I wasn't the one who couldn't tell an earthworm from a snake."

"That was Jun!" Yuzu shrieks.

"I didn't break out in hives because someone thought playing catch with caterpillars was a good idea."

"Blame Nam! He started it!"

"And I never, _never_ came to the rink needing a first aid kit because bee stings are the worst."

"But they were only protecting their babies!" Yuzu squeals and Javi's stomach really, really hurts.

"Those were crazy times, weren't they, Yuzu?"  
  
"Yeah," Yuzu smiles, nostalgic. He reaches for a glass of water, choking on residual laughter as they both take deep breaths to get the air back into their lungs.  
  
“But the one advice to take from it,” Yuzu adds, total seriousness in his face, although there’s some more cracks on it, not just the ones of the broken glass-screen, “should have been to know that they will die. They always die, no matter what Javi does; Javi can’t help it, it’s the cycle of life.”  
  
“Wow, so now you’re not only the perfect scientist, but the perfect philosopher too. Did you come from ancient Greece or something?”  
  
“Hey, we have a great history of philosophy in Japan too! But how could you know, you foolish peasant knight that doesn’t even uphold the natural cycle of all earthly things. It’s life and death, Javi, life and death. Life an—” but here the fractures become too many, the facade shattering in pieces and giggles flooding through.

Javi rips his eyes from his phone for a moment. He looks up and the sky is the same blue, the same white, and the scent of fresh rain and rosemary dabbles through the yard like it did in that special, special place. He takes a step back and nearly brushes into the bush with a hundred arms, a million thorns, and a thousand flowers. Strings of chlorophyll-laden hearts and three-petalled blooms spring from its center like a hydra from nature’s jack-in-the-box, armed with needles. There's waves of fuchsia, and the palest pinks, and reddish-orange, just like those sunsets. Just like those dawns. He can almost imagine hens clucking, or a stray tortoise pawing under the budding tomatoes, or brown snails poking their eyes out like tiny watchtowers while obliterating teenage cabbage.

_Those were the days._

"Yuzu?" he ventures to ask, interrupting his former training mate's rambling, "Do you remember when we convinced Jun to keep a pinecone in the pocket of his jacket for good luck?"

Yuzu blinks for a few seconds, trying to recollect that particular scene. "I remember!" His eyes crinkle fondly. "Jun stuffed his jacket full of pinecones but forgot about them when he did a run-through and the other juniors wondered why there were so many pieces falling out of his clothes!"

"Do you remember what you did?"

"I did a Seimei pose beside Brian."

"And then?"

"There was a beetle flying out of my sleeves! And it landed on Brian's face! And he screamed!"

"And one of the kids thought your Seimei magic was actually working. First the cursed pinecones, then the insect spell—"

"Don't forget the frogs in the lockers!"

"For the hundredth time, that was Nam! I swear I had nothing to do with it!"

Once again, Yuzu dissolves into maniacal giggles. Javi's eyes squeeze shut and the fence vanishes, the continents between them fade away; their phones are tucked safely in their jeans, Yuzu is lipsyncing to the symphony of a swarm of bees, and the only thing that divides them now is a haphazard barbecue stick trellis. Spring has draped its feathers over Ontario, and TCC has just decided to plant a garden.

**Author's Note:**

> Discontinued by the authors.


End file.
